VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: I am obliged to reply to John Thompson’s letter criticizing Carlos M. Pietri’s article “Which country (USA or Cuba) is getting a much better deal?” published in VHeadline on May 9.

I had a recent exchange of correspondence with Mr. Thompson and unfortunately he does not appear to recall what I wrote to him about the latest poverty index in Venezuela, taken from the government’s own statistics as published in a voluminous report by the National Statistics Institute (INE) called the “Social Report.”

He repeats the same opinion as he wrote to me.

Simply saying that poverty levels have increased from 43% to 53% during the Chavez regime is oversimplifying this important matter.

The true figure is 42.8% to 55.1% up to end 2003.

Statistically it is true but a close look at the INE report on poverty reveals that from 1999 to 2001, the poverty index went down, not up.

Here are the figures, since this manipulation of which Mr. Thompson is a victim is still being peddled by the enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution in web sites and the mass media:

Poverty Overall (by semester and by family unit) Latest available statistics
1998		1999		2000		2001		2002		2003
1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd
49%	43.9%	42.8%	42%	41.6%	40.4%	39.1%	39%	41.5%	48.6%	54%	55.1%
Extreme Poverty
1998		1999		2000		2001		2002		2003
1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd
21%	17.1%	16.6%	16.9%	16.7%	14.9%	14.2%	14%	16.6%	21%	25.1%	25%

Have any of the government critics asked themselves why the poverty index went up?

The trend from 1999, when Chavez took office, to end 2001 was clearly down and then in the 1st half of 2002 started to rise and continued to do so in 2003. The reversal of this trend is attributable to the context in which it happened. Coup d’etat in April 2002, economic and oil industry sabotage from December 2002 to February 2003, the losses of which have just been published and amount to US$18 billion from the oil industry and a further US$12 billion from lost production. A cool US$30 billion, or a whole year’s national budget at that time.

If any country in the world took a hit of those proportions equaling one year’s national budget, it would be inevitable that the standard of living would fall and poverty increase.

Mr. Thompson should ask himself who organized the coup and the economic sabotage. Chavez?

• If he did he would be to blame but it was the political opposition, backed by the US, who fueled these dastardly acts against the Venezuelan people.

Those are the culprits for what was effectively a gross violation of human rights in a political “strike” and no one is in jail or even been brought to trial for these crimes.

Their time will come, mark my words.

I included the Extreme Poverty statistics to illustrate that it was the most vulnerable in society who took the brunt of these actions and suffered the consequences. A rise from 14% in extreme poverty or 25% -- a catastrophe since it rose from 3.36 million human beings, to 5.76 million, just so that the former ruling classes could try and regain their disgusting privileges.

The Social Report also reveals that the effects of this sabotage even caused the slow moving average of life expectancy to decline as well. In 2002 it was 73.72 years and in 2003 declined to 72.98, such was the effect of the economic mayhem.

It is also interesting to note that the Human Development Report in the same INE report indicates that this index went up, and has been rising even despite the economic sabotage mentioned above. This index is more encompassing than how much money you have in your pocket -- the usual western way of calculating wealth or poverty -- since it sees the human being as a whole and not just as a “consumption machine.”

*preliminary

The measurement of the HDR is based on the values:

Level Value

Low 0.5-

Medium/Low 0.5 – 0.59

Medium 0.6 – 0.69

Medium/High 0.7 -0.79

High 0.8+

The higher the figure, the more complete is human development.

Readers can see the “blips” in 2002 and 2003 due to the financial hit the country took, as described above. Norway heads the list has an HDR approaching 0.96! Venezuela is in Position 68 out of 177 countries covered.

The question I have for Mr. Thompson is whether the economic model being implemented in Venezuela is a “disaster” as he implies in his letter?

This is not a Soviet or Eastern European model, even though you can label it “socialist” if you like.

The aim of the Bolivarian Revolution is to defeat poverty by 2021, as Chavez has said more then once. These statistics prove beyond any reasonable doubt that human development and therefore human dignity are benefiting from the policies being implemented by the Chavez “regime”, which by the way, means “government” and not anything sinister as its common usage has become.

• The HDR has improved and should continue to do so in Venezuela due to the social programs being implemented in the Missions - free health care, education, meals for the poor in soup kitchens, affordable food at Mercal, Bolivarian Schools., five universities opened since 1999 and so on.

Mr. Thompson says glibly that Chavez blames capitalism. True, but he also blames US imperialism as represented by the global corporate empire which exists in South America to “rape and pillage” in much the same way as the conquistadores did when Cortez and Pizarro arrived from Spain almost 500 years ago.

The capitalist model has not worked in South America ... except perhaps for the 20% of the middle classes and super rich.

South America is the most unequal of all continents, including Africa.

Where does the blame lie?

In the pervading economic model ... capitalism and even feudalism and slavery exist on the land in many countries. Can anyone tell me how the South American peoples have benefited from this model?

I would be interested to hear their arguments, before turning them into “cosmic dust.”

Recent opinion polls published by arch-enemies of Chavez, namely Datanalysis, affirm that his approval rating and popularity are around +70%.

If he was doing such as terrible job, then it would be impossible to have such a rating, especially from this company whose predictions of Chavez’ “defeats” were so inaccurate that even they could not have believed their own findings they published in the 1998 and 2000 presidential elections.

Chavez’ rating is extraordinary considering that he came to power 7 years and three months ago.

Sorry Mr. Thompson, you’ll have to do more research to convince not only myself, but also the Venezuelan people that our economic model is not working. Next time try and do so with some reasonable facts to back up your arguments, instead of making blanket statements based on cliches, hearsay and conventional conceptions of what “socialism” or “Bolivarianism” means in the context of modern day Venezuela.

Carlos Herrera
Carlos.Herrera@VHeadline.com